Daybreak Wednesday, 6/3/26

Sunny, warmer. High pressure has settled in for a spell (today and tomorrow, anyway), and temps are slowly rising. Yesterday it was mid 70s. Today, either side of 80. Tomorrow, even warmer. We’ll have light winds from the northwest again today, low somewhere around 50 tonight.

Like a mirror. That was the Connecticut on Monday morning, as Rebecca Lafave looked down toward Ascutney from the Ridge Trail behind Kendal in Hanover.

Rolling roadblock in WRJ this morning. The Special Olympics Law Enforcement Torch Run/Walk/Bike passes through Hartford from 10 to 11 am, and runners will start at the Mascoma Bank on Sykes Mountain Ave., head down North Main Street and across the Urban Bridge, then down Maple Street to Lyman Point Park. The Hartford PD warns that “motorists traveling north on North Main Street between Sykes Mountain Avenue and the junction of North Main Street x Hartford Avenue x Maple Street should expect delays during that time.” Walkers and bikers are taking different routes, but shouldn’t affect traffic until they get to the corner of North Main and Maple streets.

Train strikes, kills person in Claremont. WCAX reports that according to Amtrak, around 6 pm yesterday evening the Vermonter train headed north to St. Albans was passing through south Claremont “when a person trespassed onto the tracks and was hit.” Details are scant: The TV station reports that the person’s identity is being withheld, and that “none of the 53 passengers or crew on board were injured in the incident.” The train was held for several hours, and then resumed its trip. Claremont police and Amtrak are investigating.

With lower costs, Lebanon workforce housing proposal stirs back to life. At least, that’s what city council member Tim McNamara is hoping will happen at tonight’s council meeting, where he’ll present a plan for five two-bedroom modular homes on city-owned property off Barrows Street. The council killed a similar proposal back in February—but that was for a cottage development on a single parcel. Now, reports Clare Shanahan in the Valley News, planners have pared infrastructure and site prep costs, bringing the proposed sales price for each home to $399K. First dibs go to city, school district, and housing authority employees.

Vital Communities pauses Woodstock Listserv over “uncivil communication.” In an announcement to the Woodstock list on Monday, the local nonprofit—which owns 51 listservs that serve the region and the vast bulk of the individual town lists—said it is giving the list a breather. In a statement last night (at the link), it explained, “In recent months, the tone and nature of an increasing number of posts on the Woodstock listserv have fallen short of the standards of respect and professionalism that our guidelines require.” Though the group doesn’t single out threads, accusations surrounding the demotion of former police chief Joe Swanson have grown heated in recent months. The group is surveying Woodstock subscribers before moving forward.

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When a bookseller says, “Here, you have to read this!”… That’s how the Norwich Bookstore’s Sam Kaas heard about Jonathan Miles’ Eradication: A Fable—when another bookseller whose taste he trusts blindly “wouldn’t shut up about it”—and in this week’s Enthusiasms, he’s passing it along. This “weird, dark gem of a novel,” he writes, tells the story of a man overwhelmed by a devastating loss who takes a job on a remote Pacific island that’s been beset by invasive goats; helping to restore its fragile ecosystem, Sam notes, “actually boils down to one crude task: kill as many goats as possible.” Only then, it turns out, he’s not alone on the island.

DHMC invests in new program for pregnant patients with substance use issues. More babies are delivered there having been exposed to drugs than at any other hospital in NH. So the hospital is using $900K in federal funding to alter two existing rooms in its birthing pavilion into a suite equipped to manage withdrawal and start treatment medications. “Highly toxic illicit substances, including fentanyl, xylazine, and medetomidine, have made withdrawal management increasingly unpredictable and medically complex, rendering standard outpatient care insufficient for many, especially during pregnancy,” DH writes in a press release. More at the link.

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About those benches on West Leb Main Street. You may remember Susan Apel’s stroll down Main Street last week. She came out of it with a question: Why don’t the city’s new benches face the street. Now, in Artful, Public Works engineer Rod Finley has an answer—especially for the benches at the bus stop by the Kilton, which face one another at a right angle to the street: The idea, he says, is “to create an inviting atmosphere that supports both group interactions and quieter moments for those who prefer to sit alone but still want to feel like they are part of community interaction.” The benches also provide pedestrians a buffer from traffic, he writes.

Claremont’s city manager resigns. Nancy Bates took the job in January, becoming the city’s fourth full-time manager in a decade, reports Patrick O’Grady in the VN. But in a one-page resignation letter on Monday, she told the city council that, facing recruitment and retention issues and “many areas in need of modernization and attention” have created such an intense workload that it’s “taken a substantial negative toll on my health and quality of life.” She’ll stay on for two to three months to allow for a transition. One council member tells O’Grady that the revolving door to the manager’s office has its roots in micromanagement by councilors.

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There’s a lot of “hidden” lakefront housing. It’s not hidden from the road, but in forested states like NH it definitely is from satellites. Which means, researchers at UNH’s Carsey School point out in a new paper, that the National Land Cover Database classifies a lot of shoreline as forested when in fact it’s densely settled—which has implications for officials trying to understand water quality, cyanobacteria blooms, and more. Looking at Lake Sunapee, for instance, the researchers found that large portions classified by the NLCD as forested “had ‘hidden’ high density housing and…medium density housing.” This held true elsewhere in northern New England and the Midwest.

How to cut your PFAS exposure. There’s probably no reporter in New England who knows more about the “forever” chemicals than NHPR’s Mara Hoplamazian, who’s been reporting on contamination in the state for years. Now, Hoplamazian’s on NPR with a story about how to reduce exposure: how to check and then, if needed, filter your water; pay attention to your food; know which household products contain them (everything from nonstick pans to waterproof coats to stain-resistant upholstery). Also, cosmetics. Geisel epidemiology prof Meghan Romano says to check moisturizers and other things “you're going to put on your face or your body and leave there all day."

From (the very) east to (the very) west across America … on foot. On May 25, Wesley Tils set out on foot from Maine’s West Quoddy Head State Park, headed for Washington’s Cape Alava. In case you’re counting, that’s about 7,900 miles, mostly on trails but also, not. Tils, writes Ash Routen on ExplorersWeb, is no newbie; he’s already hiked almost 15,000 miles, including the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide trails. He expects to hit the North County Trail through Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota in the winter, pass through grizzly bear country, and complete the trek toward the end of 2027, some 500 days from now.

Leave no trace? Not at the world’s highest campground. Camp IV on Mt. Everest, which is also known as the South Col, sits at around 26,000 feet. Climbers mass there before their final push toward the summit—which nearly 1,000 people did this climbing season—but they tend not to linger, given the low oxygen levels that high. One of the last up and down was a climber named Angelina Angelova, who caught what Camp IV looks like after everyone’s left. Does Green Up Day exist atop Everest?

Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.

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HEADS UP
At the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, “Heist! How to Steal a Masterpiece (And Why You Probably Shouldn’t Try)”. Yes, it’s a drive. But how often do you get a chance to hear the country’s only professor of art crime? Erin Thompson, who teaches at CUNY, will explore the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa, the smash and grab targeting Yogi Berra’s World Series rings, a Rembrandt swiped four times from the same museum, and more. Plus security failures, the psychology of art thieves, and why some masterpieces vanish and are never seen again. 6 pm.

At the Norwich Bookstore, Jasper Craven with God Forgives, Brothers Don’t. The NEK native who covers military and veterans’ issues for a variety of publications, including the NYT and Politico, will be reading from his new book, which is subtitled The Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood. It grew out of a 2018 investigation into the VT National Guard and a 2022 investigative piece on hazing, fighting, and sexual assaults at Valley Forge Military Academy, and explores a “sprawling, well-funded network featuring dozens of military schools…plus thousands of ROTC programs in public colleges and high schools” that’s given the military influence on education, definitions of masculinity, and more. 7 pm.

And for today...

Every time the British retro soul/funk/disco/electronica band Jungle goes up with a video, people take notice. You can see why the group is as well known for its choreography as for its music here, with “The Wave”—which just went up a few days ago and already has 1.6 million views.

See you tomorrow.

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